The 790FX Northbridge introduced support for HyperTransport 3.0 to AMD chipsets. HT3.0 brought the transfer rate between the CPU and the chipset on the motherboard to 5200MTs/second. The 790FX chipset also introduced quad PCI Express x16 graphics to the forefront meaning that up to four ATI cards can be Crossfired together to improve performance.

AMD released their first Quad Core CPUs last year (Phenom X4 9750 Black Edition) to a bit of a mixed reaction owing to the fact that they had an issue with performance in benchmarks. With the release of the Phenom X4 9750 and 9850 CPUs, the performance issues are a thing of the past. The 790FX chipset supports all AM2+ and AM2 CPUs including the 9850 and 9950 which require 125W TDP and 140W TDP respectively.

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CrossfireX is ATIís trademark for their multiple graphics card capability supported by their chipsets and certain Intel chipsets that have more than one PCI Express x16 slot. Two 4870 X2s or up to four 4870s or other ATI video card can be installed, assuming you have the necessary room on the motherboard and case to sport all of them.

AMD moved the memory controller to the CPU with the launch of the AMD Opteron family of processors. What this means is that though the ASUS M3A79T-A motherboard natively supports DDR2-1066MHz memory, the memory is only supported when the CPU is an AM2+ CPU that supports that memory and not determined by the type of memory installed on the computer.

Capacitors are the bane of oneís motherboard existence especially if they start leaking onto the motherboard causing the board to become unstable or unusable. The M3A79-T sports Solid capacitors made in Japan, meaning that they will not likely break off unless a lot of force is used. I prefer Japanese capacitors as their products tend to have higher quality than Chinese products.

The M3A79-T board has an 8+2 phase power design. An 8-phase power design allows CPUs like the aforementioned Phenom X4 9950 to be used without worries. Independent power to the CPU, chipset, memory and other vital components is vital to stable memory performance and excellent stability of the CPU even under the heaviest loads. ASUS Express Gate is a built-in operating system that can boot up right after the BIOS POST. Express Gate uses a SSD drive to boot off. The current version of Express Gate offers web browsing, Skype, IM and photo viewing without booting to Windows. The first screen after POST is the Express Gate Splash screen. If you choose to enter Express Gate you choose the language and accept the License agreement. All functions are available with a click of the button. The Web browser is a version of Firefox.